Aftermath
by Alohamaura
Summary: A story told largely from Maura's POV beginning in 1917 and extending to 1957, encompassing two of the world's largest conflicts. From the battlefields of Ypres during WWI to the terrors of occupied France during WWII, this story follows Maura and Jane's journey together as they struggle to keep their love alive in one of history's most volatile periods.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Maura Isles sat in the window bay of the study idly fiddling with a large, ornate ring on her elegant hand. Warm April sunshine streamed through the tall oriel windows to halo her full head of white hair, a few errant strands of which fell across her aged face but Maura was too lost in thought to notice.

Forty years. It was forty years ago today that Maura first saw her, all clean and innocent in her neat, starched uniform, her cap askew on a head of wild dark hair. The others had looked so frightened, huddled together like baby penguins, shuffling back and forth so that no-one was left on their own. But Jane had stood apart. Staunch. Legs thrown wide, brown eyes blazing. Daring the world to throw her the gauntlet, fully prepared to throw it back.

Maura should have known the young native Bostonian would be trouble. There was something inherently wild about her, a rebellious streak that refused to be tamed. She looked around the crowded tent like it was nothing more than a train station on a busy day, unfazed by the screaming men writhing on tables and beds, their pinched hands groping for human comfort from the doctors and nurses who rushed between them like frantic worker bees. There was something intimidating about her, a passionate intent that was equal parts terrifying and intoxicating.

She was a dangerous drug. And right from the start Maura was hooked.

Forty years had passed since that day. Forty years for Maura's addiction to sate itself, only to manifest with the next smile or laugh or the purr of Jane's gravelly voice. Forty years of lazy Sunday afternoons and rainy Mondays, of summers when the heat was too thick for clothing and winters when snowdrifts muffled the moan of wind gusts against the cottage. There had been thousands of mornings and sunsets together. Thousands of days of smiles and tears, of laughter and misery, of death and life.

Their love had burgeoned in the cusp of war and encompassed some of the darkest hours of man. And until her dying breath Maura knew it would continue burning in her breast.

"_M__émé_?"

The hesitant voice caused Maura to start, and she swivelled to see a wide-eyed child peering cautiously around the open mahogany doors, tiny fingers clutching one of the handles.

"_Mon b__ébé__!" _Maura replied with a smile. The child's face lit up and he ran quickly across the study to throw himself into Maura's waiting arms.

"And how are you, my little one?" Maura asked, gently detaching him so that she could look into his eyes. Her eyes. "How is your English?"

"My English is good, _m__émé," _he replied with a slight French lilt, grinning to reveal a missing front tooth.

"Why, look at this! You are growing up! Soon you shall be as big as your papa," Maura said, clapping her hands against his shoulders and pretending to marvel at his skinny frame.

"I am nearly as tall as him!" the child declared, rocking forwards onto his tip-toes and puffing himself up.

"You are, my sweet child, you are," Maura replied.

"Marcel?" The voice floated up the stairwell from the floor below. "Marcel, where have you gotten to?"

"Come, my child, your mama is waiting," Maura said, standing and gently enfolding her grandson's small hand in her own weathered one. Together they crossed the study and descended the spiraling staircase to the hall below.

Waiting at the bottom was Maura's daughter Angela. Even now, some thirty-eight years since she'd given birth to her, Maura was still taken aback at how much Angie looked like Jane. Her hair was dark and curly, her face thin and angular. She wore an original Cristóbal Balenciaga fitted suit which hugged her tall, spare frame. Maura recognised it as one she had purchased herself for Angie shortly before the war and marvelled at how time had taken so much from her but so little from her daughter who showed no sign of ageing. She looked exactly like Jane had twenty years ago. Except her eyes. She had Maura's eyes.

"There you are," Angie said, looking down at Marcel. "Are you ready, mama?"

"Yes. I'm ready," Maura replied, tightening her grip on Marcel's tiny fingers.

Together they exited the cottage and followed the cobbled pathway to where Angie's husband waited with the car – a black Mercedes 260D in impeccable condition. Maura paused at the garden gate and stared at it for a second, painful memories surfacing involuntarily.

"Mama?" Angie said. Maura said nothing. Angie gently took her by the arm and led her to the car. Her husband opened the door for Maura and she slid jerkily into the backseat, gripping the old leather tightly on either side of her thighs.

The car's engine roared to life and Maura forced herself to focus on Marcel bouncing in the seat next to her, rather than what she knew had happened in this car. The 260D slowly bounced along the dirt road and pulled onto the wide lane that led to Arras. It still rode as smooth as it had twelve years ago when Maura last sat in this seat.

Arras was quiet today. Fresh laundry flapped on clotheslines in the warm spring breeze. Children played with a ball in the street, parting like a shoal of fish for the old German car as it cut up the cobbled roads, weaving its way through the sleeping city. Maura looked out the small rear window at the sun shining on the faces of the tall, cramped buildings. Some still showing scars from the war – patches of missing plaster or shattered brick that gave the monotonous edifices their own character and set them apart from the new buildings built to replace those levelled by bombs in the first heady days of the invasion. The car passed street signs named after famous men – Winston Churchill, Georges Besnier, President Allende, John Fitzgerald Kennedy – until they finally pulled to a halt on the Boulevard du Général de Gaulle near the citadel and Angie's husband cut the engine.

"You wait here," Angie said to him quietly, and he nodded. But she needn't have worried about discretion, for Maura was transfixed by the sight of the tall white columns across the street.

Marcel stayed with his father as the two women ventured across the double laned roads to the open archway of the Faubourg d'Amiens cemetery. Rows of neat white headstones were cramped into the small grounds behind it, bodies of young men taken from the world at the hands of an enemy. Men Maura had comforted in their dying moments, feeling their life slip away beneath her fingers. Men broken by war.

And a woman.

Her gravestone was at the back, the newest addition to the war cemetery. The headstone gleamed a little brighter than the others, the name carved into its face fresher even if the remains mouldering beneath the grass had seen the same dangers as the men who rested beside her. When Angie and Maura reached the grave they stood silently for a few minutes, arm in arm, remembering Jane as they had known her alive. A stubborn, determined woman filled with fire and driven by a fierce desire to protect those she loved. For Angie she had been a second mother, and for Maura the very breath in her lungs, the blood that surged through her veins, and the will to push on through the sourest of times. Together they stood and honoured the memory of the woman who had protected them, sheltered them, loved them and laughed with them. A heroine who deserved her place amongst the dead of wars passed.

And as they stood there Maura slipped back in time, reaching through her faded memories to a darker time when she finally found her light.


	2. Chapter 2

The man with the broken leg was the last of Maura's shift. All day a steady stream of wounded men had trickled in through the doors of Casualty Clearing Station Five and Maura had treated everything from superficial shrapnel wounds, to a more serious double amputation. By seven o'clock she was dead on her feet.

The evening air outside was thick with heat, but she took great gulps of it to rid her lungs of the stench of fresh blood and unwashed soldiers. As she breathed an unruly curl escaped the pins in her hair to swing before her sharp hazel eyes; eyes that roved the mercifully quiet lane outside the station and missed nothing. She saw yet another stretcher case in the distance being shouldered towards them by four medics, but Korsak had told her she was not to work another man until she'd had a few hours rest so Maura stepped to the other side of the road to the shade proferred by a crumbling stone wall and began to walk down the lane.

Somewhere a brave insect was chirruping a pitifully lonely song, and far off at the front several guns rumbled. Maura passed several soldiers playing a game of two-up and ignored their catcalls with a weary flip of her hand. A team of four horses plodded by dragging a howitzer, followed by several mules carrying eight heavy rounds apiece.

There was no colour anywhere, Maura mused. Everything was grey or brown or the drab olive colour of the soldier's uniforms. Even the ruins lay desolate under a mantle of dirt and powder. Nothing stirred in the intese heat but the great machine of war, a machine that ground on and on and spat out its used parts in the form of the broken men Maura laboured over day and night. The station was the only place with any colour and it was the shocking scarlet of a boy's perforated abdomen, or a farmer's nicked jugular. War was an artist.

Maura's bivvy loomed a dozen yards ahead. It was one of just a handful of unscathed buildings this side of town, closest to the frontline. It had once been a schoolhouse with one small room, a blackboard, several bookshelves and a collection of slate and pencils. The children had been evacuated years before when the fighting first came to their doorstep and the desks replaced with beds for the nurses of Armentieres.

As desperate as she was for sleep, Maura bypassed the small door of the schoolhouse and carried on another hundred yards until she found the mess tent. It was mercifully empty save for a handful of runners from C Company who were huddled in a corner hunched over their mess tins. Dinner was a watery soup with several carrots and questionable lumps of potato floating on the filmy surface. Maura also managed to weasel a quarter loaf of bread from the cook, a rotund little man with a walrus moustache and a fondness for the tough American nurse who liked to listen to his stories.

On the way back to her bivvy Maura was nearly struck down by a staff car being driven far too quickly. She shouted out as she dived out of the way but the stiff-necked officer in the backseat didn't look back. Maura was still brushing dust from her stained apron when she clomped up the schoolhouse steps and walked inside.

If there hadn't been a war on Maura thought she would have liked to be a teacher. There was something magical in the stillness of a schoolroom, in the way the dust particles eddied in the sunlight streaming through the high windows and the smell of chalk and paper that lingered even now, three years after it last heard the laughter of eager little students. She took a deep breath and a small smile came to her lips.

There were fourteen beds. Hers was right by the door, the sheets folded neatly and turned over at the top, the heavy woollen blanket resting at the foot. The other beds were similarly made, although only three of them were occupied. The other ten waited a fresh shipment of nurses to replace those injured or killed. The attrition rate was high even among nurses. There had been fifteen of them originally. Two had been killed by German shelling as they helped the medics retrieve injured soldiers close to the frontline. Six had been injured, both from enemy action and from simple accidents, and had been sent back to England. Two had died of diseases contracted from ill soldiers. And one girl had a brief love affair with a soldier and fell pregnant. She had been sent home and he was killed the next week in a trench raid.

Maura had enlisted in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry immedately after war broke out in July of 1914. She had trained in England before being sent to France and attached to a British division in a field hospital. However, she felt she could do more if she worked closer to the front and put together a team of likeminded nurses headed by an older gentlemanly doctor by the name of Vince Korsak, who was also an American. He had married an English girl and moved to London where he set up a practise. At the outbreak of war he offered his services to the army, who said he was too old for service. Unperturbed, Korsak had paid his way across the channel into France and set up a volunteer aid station. With the help of Maura and her nurses he moved the station to Armentieres in the Ypres sector. They worked tirelessly during the First Battle of Ypres and after the major hostilities had ceased the army recognised their efforts by officialising their aid station and ensuring a steady supply of medics, field ambulances, bandages and medicine.

The station had weathered another major offensive at Ypres in 1915, before enjoying a relatively quiet year by comparison in 1916. Although they continued to be supplied they had yet to be reinforced by more nurses. There were four of them left, including Maura. Two of the other girls were English, and the fourth was an older woman from Edinburgh who the three younger women affectionately called "Mother". They got along well enough, though the long and unpredictable hours they worked meant they rarely had the time or energy to do more than eat and sleep.

None of them were home when Maura entered the schoolhouse. She knew that Eliza and Beth, the two young English women, were driving field ambulances today, and Gwynn, "Mother", was working with Korsak in Maura's absence. After the stink and chaos of working in a busy aid station Maura relished the solitude. She collapsed onto her bed fully clothed, and in two minutes was fast asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

A fist hammering on the door woke Maura from her slumber.

"Gas!" came the cry.

Maura stumbled to the door and found Peter Lewis, a Private attached to C Company's headquarters, panting on the stoop.

"Gas attack up the lines!" he said. Maura didn't need him to elaborate. Already fully dressed she followed him at a dead run down the steps and up the street.

Milling soldiers looked up in surprise as Maura and Peter tore past them. As they ran the two were joined by several other men – medics – all merging to pelt towards the aid station. The road was suddenly filled with running bodies, dodging around the gun limbers and narrowly avoiding a column of marching men. Maura saw an artillery horse spook out of the corner of her eye, heard the soldier astride it shout out angrily, but her searing lungs prevented her from shouting an apology as the aid station finally came into view.

In the distance she could see the first field ambulance bumping off the road to the frontline. A column of men staggered behind it, some holding the shoulders of the men in front.

"What … gas … is it?" Maura rasped around the burn in her chest.

"Mustard," came Peter's reply. His long, skinny legs carried him ahead of Maura and he was the first of the group to arrive at the aid station. Maura wasn't far behind, and she found that Korsak had managed to clear most of the beds in the time she had been asleep.

The grey-haired, bearded native Bostonian was loudly directing a team of medics as they set up an extra couple of beds at the end of the tent.

"They've just come off the road," Maura alerted him breathlessly. Korsak turned and saw her, nodded once, then directed the medics to intercept the incoming flood of gas victims.

Maura had dealt with gas before, and mustard gas was the worst. Heavier than air it crept like a hunting cat across the battlefield and stealthily settled in every depression in the landscape, where it remained for a long time after its release. Soldiers would often take shelter in a shellhole only to find a cloud of deadly mustard gas lurking in the bottom. Entire trenches had to be evacuated after its use. Thick and greasy it attacked the skin, eyes and lungs of its victims, blistering around the mouth and in every crease of skin beneath the man's clothing.

The only treatment they could provide at the station was a bath in hot water and soap to rinse the chemicals from the skin, and eye rinses to prevent infection and blindness. The men would be in agony long after they left. Many would be scarred for life. Gas victims were the worst to treat. Men and boys coughing and choking, the skin on their faces and bodies stretched tight, all of them screaming in fear and pain. A man with a flesh wound from shrapnel understood what might happen to him, but gas was a new weapon. And the fear of the unknown was greater than the fear of death.

Maura dreaded the next few hours, but she found her apron and pulled it on nonetheless. It was then that Korsak clattered to her side, depositing a blood-stained tray of utensils and bandages onto the table beside Maura.

"We've been reinforced," were the first gruff words from his mouth.

"What?" Maura asked blankly, deftly tying her apron strings behind her back and tugging it down her hips.

Korsak flicked his eyes to a corner of the tent. Maura lifted her head and saw a huddle of young women gathered there, staring wide-eyed at the few remaining wounded. Maura's gaze bounced from face to face, then was drawn inexplicably to a tall, thin, sharply featured woman who stood a few feet away alone.

"They only just arrived," Korsak said.

The woman, sensing Maura's scrunity, looked up and Maura was met with a pair of stunning, dark, liquid brown eyes. Maura felt her breath catch. Her heart leapt against her ribcage. It unnerved her.

"Well they're in for a fucking shock," she replied, tearing her gaze away from the woman and reaching for a stack of clean rags.

Seconds later the quiet tent was thrown into chaos as dozens of gassed men staggered through the open flap. Maura's autopilot kicked in. She rushed from bed to bed, directing the new nurses to strip them of the contaminated clothing and begin to sponge-bath the men. She pointed out the problem areas – under the jaw, the armpits, the folds of the elbows and knees, and the crotch. One or two of the young women baulked at handling the men's genitals and Maura had to tell them to get over it.

"You're field nurses," she snapped, whisking by with an armful of discarded uniforms. "Do your damn jobs!"

She passed the woman whose gaze she'd met earlier bent over a soldier who couldn't have been older than eighteen. He was crying with fistfuls of the woman's apron in his pinched hands, staring unseeingly at the roof of the tent.

"You're okay, you're okay," the woman said to him, her voice deep and gravelly. "Tell me about yourself. Where are you from?"

"L-london," the boy stuttered, spluttering as he struggled not to cough.

"London! I've never been there."

"A-are you … American?" he hacked.

The woman smiled. "Yes. I'm from Boston."

"W-where's t-that?"

"Near New York."

"New York," the boy replied wistfully, sinking back against the stretcher.

Maura continued to the table where the uniforms were being dumped and retrieved a fresh bucket of water, returning to the Boston nurse.

"Here," she said, replacing the dirty water with the fresh bucket.

"Thanks." Maura's chest tightened at the smile the woman gave her. A few strands of dark, curly hair had escaped from beneath her cap and hung across her thin face. Maura had to force herself to turn away. As she did she saw a dark skinned man stagger into the tent under the weight of an unconscious medic.

"Maura!" he called in French tinged with a thick Moroccan accent.

"Badr!" she replied, hurrying to his aid. Together they managed to get the comatose man onto a stretcher bed. Maura noted blood dripping from beneath a bandage wrapped hastily around the man's thigh.

"Shrapnel on the high road," Badr Givre gasped. It was then that Maura realised it was Badr's partner George on the table. George drove the ambulance that he and Badr operated together. She'd only met him a few times, but he and Badr were usually inseparable.

"Quick, go find Korsak," Maura said urgently, pressing her hands to the gushing wound in a futile attempt to stem the flow of blood. Badr nodded and rushed off to find the doctor.

It took too long. Maura's arms were dead by the time Badr returned with Korsak, and so was George. He'd bled out in minutes. Korsak confirmed it as Maura cleaned her hands on her apron.

"Get his meat ticket," Korsak said, and Maura reached to remove the aluminium disc from the leather throng around the young British man's neck. But a dark hand stopped her.

She looked up and met Badr's steady gaze. He wasn't much taller than her, and was lithely built. His large hand encircled her wrist easily.

"No. Let me," he said softly. Maura hesitated, then nodded. Badr tugged the leather throng out from beneath George's tunic and removed one of the discs, leaving the other on the throng which he tucked back under George's clothing.

"I'll go find a cart -" Maura began.

"No. I will carry him. It isn't far," Badr replied. He bent and scooped up his friend. "Thankyou, Maura," he said, nodding to her. Then he turned on his heel and strode from the tent.


	4. Chapter 4

It was another fourteen hours before the last of the gas victims were loaded onto ambulances and sent behind lines. Korsak and Gwynn had taken advantage of the lull to go snatch a few hours sleep, leaving Maura to run the station. By sunset the amount of wounded had slowed enough for her to send Eliza and Beth back to the schoolhouse with half of the new nurses.

That left five with her including the tall Boston nurse whose name, by then, she knew to be Jane Rizzoli – a debutante who had dropped out of her first year at Radcliffe much to her mother's chagrin when America declared war in April.

Unfortunately, Maura discovered that Jane's rebellious streak had followed her to Belgium. In just a few short hours Maura caught Jane flirting with the medics, telling fantastical lies to scare the younger nurses, smoking when Maura had asked her to wash bandages, and painting "USA" on the side of a British field ambulance. Each time Jane was caught Maura's reprimands fell on deaf ears. The young woman just laughed them off.

By nightfall Maura was sick of it. After she caught Jane smoking for the umpteenth time Maura went in search of Badr.

She found the Frenchman playing two-up with a bunch of other medics, trading the cheap British cigarettes soldiers affectionately called 'coffin nails'. Badr didn't smoke - any cigarettes he won he gave to the wounded men he transported in his ambulance – he just enjoyed the camaraderie and the chance to practise his English. He had dreams of visiting England one day.

"Maura!" he called when he saw her approaching. His handsome face softened into a wide smile, the white of his teeth made even brighter by the contrast with his dark skin. Maura smiled back.

"Badr, are you winning?" she asked.

Badr's smile changed to a rueful grin. "I am not," he replied. "There will be few cigarettes to hand out tonight."

Maura took a seat on the dusty earth and watched the men flip coins for a while. The sun had finally set and the heat of the day was slowly receding. A breeze sprang up and cooled the sweat on the back of Maura's neck. Unfortunately it came from the Front, bringing with it the pervasive stench of death and cordite.

After a few minutes of silence Maura decided to broach her idea with Badr.

"Badr, do you need another partner?" she asked, trying to be as sensitive as possible. She knew the death of George was still a raw wound.

"I do," he replied, tossing a few more cigarettes into the middle of the game.

"I have a proposition for you, then."

"Prop-osition?" Badr repeated the word slowly.

"A … an idea," Maura said, trying to explain so that he'd understand.

"Oh, yes?"

"There is a new nurse at the station. She's causing trouble and I think if she had more to do she might be better off."

"Can she drive?" Badr asked.

"If she can't she will learn," Maura commented. They both laughed.

"Yes, sure. I can take her with me," Badr said, cussing softly in French when he lost the next flip of the coins.

"Great," Maura grinned. "She's been working all day, so I'll send her to get a few hours sleep and she can join you at midnight."

"I'll pick her up from the tent."

"Perfect. Thankyou, Badr," Maura said, leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek. A few of the other soldiers whistled, but they all respected Maura so she knew the catcalls were in jest.

Maura returned to the station and sent Jane to the schoolhouse under the guise of swapping her for Gwynn, who had been sleeping longer than the others. She herself had only slept for six hours in the last two days. Her head felt light but she kept moving, thankful that she knew her job so well and could operate more or less on autopilot. The younger nurses looked to be having a tough time of it. As the night wore on they made countless mistakes and kept Maura on her toes.

By midnight her head was throbbing. She felt like collapsing as she tended to a man with burns from a malfunctioned Very light, and nearly cried with relief when Eliza and Beth entered the tent with the others.

"We'll finish 'ere, Maura," Beth said, gently detaching Maura's hands from the bandage she was rerolling. Maura nodded gratefully.

"Where's Jane?" she asked, looking around for the woman. She didn't know whether it was her tired eyes or what, but she couldn't see the leggy debutante anywhere.

"We don't know," Eliza said, whisking by with an armful of used gauze.

Maura paused. "You … don't know?" Eliza nodded, dumping the gauze into a bucket of water for cleaning.

"She showed up at the schoolhouse for Gwynn. I was the only one awake when she arrived, but I fell back asleep. By the time I woke up again she wasn't there."

"Hell!" Maura growled, ripping her apron off and storming from the tent. It was pitch out. The brightest lights came from the shells exploding at the front. A few lanterns on poles stuck into the ground marked the road. Some of the artillery limbers also carried lanterns, but the ambulances bouncing off the track from the frontline did not - to avoid attracting enemy attention.

Maura hurried into the blackness and let her eyes adjust to the dark. Thankfully she knew the way to the schoolhouse like the back of her hand and easily navigated the roads. The occasional cigarette light bounced by, pressed between the lips of soldiers, as Maura broke into a run.

She thundered up the steps and burst through the door of the schoolhouse. The beds stood in their neat rows, illuminated by a solitary, dim lamp. Maura didn't know which one was Jane's and it didn't matter – the room was empty. She checked the bathroom and the small closet at the back where they sometimes changed clothes, but there was no sign of the tall nurse.

Back on the roads she rushed to the mess hall, then to clearing station four. She asked men she passed if they had seen her but none had. Frustrated Maura returned to the schoolhouse just to make sure Jane wasn't there, then made her way back to the station.

"Well, I couldn't find the bit – oh."

Maura halted. Jane was in the tent, chatting away happily with Beth. Beth caught Maura's murderous glare and paused, then turned abruptly on her heel and strode away. Jane looked confused for a second, until Maura grabbed her by the sleeve and tugged her viciously around.

"Ow! What th -"

"Where the _hell _have you been?!" Maura raged.

"I went to -" Jane began.

"Actually, I don't give a fuck," Maura interrupted. "All I care about is the fact you should have been _here _when you were fucking well _told to be_!" Jane looked taken aback at the coarse language but Maura, who had been exposed to trench talk for the past three years, didn't hesitate. "I don't know how the hell the US Army runs things, but over here every goddamn minute is crucial. You could have cost a man his life. You could have gotten me or one of the other nurses killed out looking for you. When you're told to be somewhere at a specific time _you fucking well show up!"_

Jane stared at her wide-eyed. Maura paused for breath, but before she could continue her tirade Badr walked in.

"Maura, what is wrong?" he asked in English, somewhat alarmed by her red face.

"Nothing," Maura muttered, swallowing her lecture. She thrust Jane roughly towards him. "Badr, this is Jane. Jane, Badr. You two will be operating a field ambulance together."

"A field ambulance?" Jane bristled. "I'm a nurse, not a driver!"

"Well your performance today begs to differ," Maura countered snarkily. "Now get out of my sight."

Jane opened her mouth to argue, but Badr wisely whisked her out the tent flap, loudly asking her if she'd ever driven before.

"Well, yes. Of course," Jane replied. "My father has a Roadster ..." Their voices faded quickly.

Maura's rage ebbed quickly once Jane was gone, relief washing over her. She felt her knees go weak and knew she wouldn't make it to the schoolhouse and her bed. Instead she retreated to a stretcher in the quietest, darkest corner of the tent and curled up on it fully clothed. Within seconds she was asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

****WARNING****

**This particular chapter is incredibly graphic. If you have a weak stomach or prefer not to read gory things I highly suggest skipping this chapter. I have made it so that nothing important happens between characters, so you won't miss anything by not reading this particular part of the story. This chapter is intended to set a darker tone for later.**

_I will include a glossary of terms used at the bottom of the chapter._

April melted quickly into May. Jane soon settled into her new role as a field ambulance driver with Badr reporting that she was quick, efficient and very gutsy. One evening there was a particularly fierce bombardment of the trenches closest to the town. The shrapnel was so fierce that it was nearly impossible to get medics close enough to rescue wounded men. Many of the stretcher-bearers who went forward to help became casualties themselves. Jane and Badr were the only ambulance team to brave the tempest, making several trips and saving nearly fifty men. For these actions both were awarded the British Military Medal. Badr strutted around for a week, proud of the medal not because it was awarded for bravery, but because it was given by the country he idolised.

In contrast May rolled into June with very little action in their sector. It rained heavily so the trenches were largely quiet. Most of the cases brought to the station were for hypothermia and trench foot, so the nurses were all able to have a little free time. They spent time together in the schoolhouse, laughing and chatting. A few knitted or darned socks and scarves for themselves or soldiers, the others just relished time away from the chaos of the station. It was during this time that Maura learnt a little more about Jane.

Jane was from a reasonably well off Italian family and had lived her entire life in Boston. She had two brothers, both younger. The youngest helped their father run a bank in New York while the middle brother was a baseball player with aims at making the majors. Her mother owned several restaurants that she had inherited as the only child of an Italian chef who had immigrated to America in 1875, so the family was prominent in the upper echelon of society. Jane's debutante ball had over six hundred attendees and made the morning paper. She was a very beautiful girl, and incredibly popular among the young men her parents knew. They'd both attempted to match her with sons of high ranking bankers and other businessmen, but Jane had stubbornly insisted on attending college before considering marriage. She'd been in her first year at Radcliffe when America joined the war.

"The second we heard that we were in it my friends and I signed up as nurses," Jane said. "My mother was pissed. She told me I was just doing it to disappoint her and asked me why I couldn't be a 'normal girl with a husband and children'."

Jane laughed her distinctive, throaty laugh. The other young nurses laughed as well, eyeing the confident, daring woman with a mixture of awe and jealousy. A few chimed in with their own stories about how they'd been expected to marry but had instead joined up. One or two _were _married and had enlisted because their husbands were now in the service. Alexandra - a stocky, pretty blonde girl from Philadelphia - had three young children but had left them with her parents so that she could nurse with the army.

"I want to see the world, you know?" she said. "Ryan and I never have the money to go anywhere, and I've always wanted to come here – to Europe. This is my chance. I'll nurse until the war is over and then I'll go back. But first I want to experience another culture."

Maura just shook her head. The reinforcements had been nursing for two months. They had seen a few horrific injuries, but they were yet to experience the horror of nursing after a big attack. It was still the honeymoon phase. They were yet to discover the true brutality of war. She was about to open her mouth and say something, but Jane beat her to the punch.

"Shut the fuck up, Alex. You're an idiot," she snapped. "This isn't a working holiday. You're not some nanny to a rich family, accompanying them to Nice or fucking Paris or some shit. This is war. Some poor fucker up the lines copped it and died just now, while you're sitting here safe and warm in your bed gushing about seeing the fucking world."

Alexandra looked shocked. No doubt she'd told her story in the hopes of impressing Jane and the others, instead she'd just been torn apart.

"You haven't been near the trenches yet, have you?" Jane continued, sitting up straight on her bed and leaning forwards, subconsciously making herself more threatening. "Well I'll tell you what they're like. Mud. Mud and blood and bodies. Bits of wire and broken boards. Rats as big as house cats running over men who are so fucking tired they just drop down and sleep where they fall. Lice everywhere. We all have lice," the other nurses nodded, one or two scratching absentmindedly at themselves, "but the lice up the lines are far worse. British men have little white lice. Everyone gets them. But the Germans have these big red fuckers. Some of the British guys get both, especially if they've been in the lines a while. When they're not sleeping or eating or shitting their guts out they're sitting around frying these lice in pans held over naked flames. They use the fat from melted lice to make candles.

"And the noise," Jane went on, ignoring the shocked looks on the young nurses' faces. "You can hear the bigger guns from here. But up the lines you hear much more. Crumps that hit the earth and explode with so much force they lift it a few feet off the ground. Whizz-bangs that whistle and seem to split your head when they detonate. Shrapnel rattling on tin hats and peppering the earth. Very lights fizzing up into the sky. Trench mortars that take off with a flat _thock. _Small arms barking like angry dogs. Machine guns - the Lewis guns stutter metallically, the German Spandaus rattle with a _burr-burr_. They stitch the sandbags right over your head with a sound like books dropping onto a wooden floor."

Jane picked up a book from the small table beside her bed and dropped it to make her point. It hit the wood with a sharp slap_._

"Men laughing. Men swearing. Men muttering. Men screaming. Gamblers hollering. Someone shouting to make room for a stretcher team. 'Keep left! Keep left!' Men hitting cartridges on their helmets, banging mess tins to clear them of dirt, hitting rats with trench shovels, boots thudding on the duckboards. Everything slimy and wet and grey. Puddles that suck at your boots, some deep enough to swallow a man whole. And the stench! Sweat, blood and shit mixed with cordite and smoke. Something is always burning. And that horrible stink of death from the corpses in front of the bags. They swell up out there. They get fat with gases, the skin goes black, then explodes. That's why the rats are so big. There are so many bodies for them to eat."

By now all of the new girls were green at the gills. Maura had to hide a smile.

"This isn't some kind of fucking sight-seeing trip," Jane spat at Alex, who looked like she wanted to be sick. "You're here to help the men those trenches chew up and spit out. When the war ends you can skip off to eat at fine restaurants in Paris, or ski in the mountains, but for now you are a nurse in the United States Army. So start fucking acting like one."

The room went silent after Jane's tirade ended. The only sound was the constant low rumble of guns from the front and Gwynn's knitting needles clacking together (she hadn't missed a beat during the entire speech). It was Maura who broke the hush.

"You forgot the gas," she said quietly. Everyone turned to look at her. Most of the girls looked like they hoped she wouldn't elaborate. But Maura continued.

"The gas," she went on in a slow, haunted voice, staring off at nothing. "You're up there with the men and suddenly the gas bell starts ringing and men start shouting 'gas! gas! gas!' You hear that hiss and see the cloud creeping towards you. So you pull your mask on as quick as you can, but some aren't quick enough and you get the screaming. It's not like any kind of screaming I've heard before. It's high pitched, keening. It's a sound straight from Hell itself - piercing your ears and tearing at your chest. Some poor bastard hasn't got his mask on in time. He comes staggering up towards you, eyes sunken and wide in his head, mouth open, dragging at the air trying to find the oxygen. His hands are pinched and clawed. He grabs at his throat and falls down, death rattling. Gas doesn't kill often, usually it just wounds the men. But when it does kill, when you see it kill, it's terrible."

If the room had been silent before, it was doubly so now. Maura felt a cold shroud steal over her at the memory of the boy's death. She felt Jane's eyes on her and abruptly stood up.

"War isn't a game," she said, then pivoted on her heel and left the room.

**Glossary (in order of story appearance)**

**Crumps -** a slang term for shells (explosive projectiles).

**Whizz-bangs - **another slang term for shells. These shells were named after the distinctive sound they made.

**Shrapnel - **metal shards sprayed from shells designed to inflict injuries to large amounts of men. Less destructive than HEs (high explosives).

**Very light - **a kind of flare used to illuminate No Mans Land in search of enemy troops, or to signal to men out on patrol how much time they had been out or had left.

**Trench mortar **- a small, portable device operated by a handful of men from the frontline trenches that flung grenade-type explosives to the enemy trenches opposite.

**Small arms - **rifles and hand guns.

**Duckboards - **slabs of wood laid on the bottom of trenches and over muddy sections of land so that men and supplies could be moved safely through the mud.

**Cordite - **a propellant designed in Britain to replace gunpowder.


	6. Chapter 6

_I wrote this while on security detail at work. For some reason it's a lot scarier being at work at night haha, especially when someone is supposed to be sneaking around attempting to cause harm (hence the security detail). So have a little fear inspired Rizzles! I apologise for the late update, I haven't forgotten this story I've just been insanely busy with work and university and family things._

_Badr is Frost, in case anyone hasn't realised that yet._

* * *

Maura's breath caught in her chest and she paused, one hand on the slimy trench wall, the other clenched tight around the gas mask at her hip. She thought she heard … never mind. With a deep breath she carried on, forcing herself to put one foot in front of the other. It took a lot of concentration to walk on the duckboards in the dark. An inch or two either side and she would fall into the thick, soupy mud. Men had drowned in the Flanders mud.

Behind her staggered a small column of stretcher-bearers, following Maura Indian file through the dog-legged trench. Above her howled a veritable tempest of hot lead and screaming shells. The Germans had opened up one of their signature barrages, intending to do damage to the low-lying British trench system. So far it was working pretty well. Maura had to change direction several times when she discovered that a sap she had come through an hour ago was now destroyed. Her crocodile tail of soldiers grew in numbers as freshly wounded men realised she was a nurse and joined the ranks.

There was no open light in the trenches, and Maura carried no lantern for fear of snipers, but they didn't need it anyway. The cacophony above provided them with plenty of ambient light from explosions and Verys, and Maura kept trailing her hand on the parapet so that she never felt lost. As long as her fingers were on the earth she felt safe. It was only when the trench wall was split by a communication sap that she panicked, fingers groping wildly in the air until they alighted once more in cold mud. Sometimes the gap wasn't because of another trench. Sometimes the gaping hole was the result of a destroyed section of the wall. Maura would have a split second to recognise this and duck back to halt her train of men, before carefully deciding how to bypass without risk of being shot. At one point the wall was so badly damaged they were completely exposed and Maura had to usher the wounded across in the seconds between shell blasts. It took half an hour to negotiate this hazard but Maura didn't lose a single man.

Sometime near three in the morning, just as the barrage began to intensify, Maura and her impressive collection reached the field ambulances. Someone began to loudly direct the men and Maura recognised Jane's distinctive deep, rasping voice. She beelined for her and began to help load stretcher cases into Jane and Badr's vehicle. Badr had the engine running, which was a waste of gas but with the shells beginning to fall even harder Maura knew every second counted. Soon the ambulance was full.

"Jane, you can go!" Maura yelled over the roar of a shell bursting nearby. Shrapnel peppered the roof of the truck. Maura felt a piece ping off her head and counted her blessings that it was just a stray.

"They're not loaded yet!" Jane replied.

"It's alright, I can keep loading them. Badr is ready to go!"

"No! You go, I'm staying!" Jane replied, dashing off to help lift men into another ambulance. Maura swore.

"Badr, go!" she shouted, waving her hand in case he couldn't hear her. He fixed her with a puzzled look. " GO!"

Badr hit the accelerator and his ambulance lurched onto the roadway, joining a column of trucks slowly wending their way back to the town. Maura turned and ran to find Jane. She had to dodge around walking wounded. Some reached out for her, but she directed them to medics, intent on locating Jane. After a few frantic minutes of searching she found Jane arranging a line of walking wounded, telling them to hold the tunics of the men in front then directing them onto the roadway beside the ambulances.

Maura grabbed her by the arm. "We have to leave!" she yelled. "It's too dangerous!"

"No!" Jane shouted in reply, brown eyes blazing. "They can't leave, why should I?"

"But Jane -"

"No!"

Jane wrenched her arm out of Maura's grip and ran back towards the trenches. For a split second Maura's weight shifted onto the balls of her feet, ready to tip into motion. But then her brain caught up with her instincts and reined them back in. She threw one last despairing look at the trench entrance, praying to spot Jane's white cap in the torrent of men. But then she tore her gaze away and ran to catch a ride back.

* * *

"She's a bloody idiot."

"Yeah, well, she's a lucky idiot."

"Lucky I haven't skinned her alive."

Maura and Korsak watched, arms folded, as the officer reached to pin the medal to Jane's uniform, smiling coyly beneath his yardbrush moustache as his fingers brushed her breast. Jane didn't meet his eye, but Maura saw a muscle twitch in her jaw.

The officer saluted Jane, who returned the gesture half-heartedly. His gaze slid past the nurse to the entrance of the station tent. Something akin to fear brimmed in his watery blue eyes, then he adjusted his spectacles with his smart calf-skin gloves, nodded once in Korsak's direction, and returned to the staff car he'd arrived in. The driver, who had left the engine running, pulled out straight into the path of a line of mules and chugged off in the direction of the main road.

Maura pivoted to return to the tent, but Korsak caught her elbow. She stopped and turned to look at him.

"I got the word," he said, not meeting her gaze but staring off towards the front. "It starts next week."

The hairs on Maura's nape stiffened and she felt a sudden chill descend. "Next week?" she replied quietly.

Korsak nodded. "They're pushing forward near Messines. HQ wanted us to relocate to Plugstreet* but I told them we we had a better system here. We'll need all hands, though. I expect they'll send a fair bit of traffic this way once the guts of it is underway."

"I knew it was too good to last," Maura said, referring to the relatively quiet year they'd had. She wasn't looking forward to the influx of broken men they'd be receiving from the north in the coming days. Korsak shot her a tight-lipped smile and ducked back into the station. Jane was struggling to light a cigarette in the wind, still standing where the officer had left her. The medal bounced against her chest as she struck a second match, cussing as it fizzed out. Maura watched her for a moment, too lost in thought to realise how long her gaze lingered on the muscles cording in Jane's browned neck. Then she spun on her heel and went back to work.

*** Plugstreet - **Slang for Ploegsteert, a wooded area between Armentieres and Messines.


	7. Chapter 7

"Fuck, it's dark." Jane's voice was raspier than normal. She scuffed a boot against the wet dirt, soaked by a storm earlier in the night, and fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes. Maura watched as she lit up and took a long draw on the cheap fag, one of the kind British soldiers called 'coffin nails'. She offered Badr one and he, too, lit up. Then Jane held the packet towards Maura.

"No thanks," Maura said.

"Three on a match is unlucky," Badr explained.

"Why?" Jane asked, dropping the match and extinguishing it with her heel.

"Well," Badr replied, "first light the sniper spots you, second light he gets a bead on it, third light ..." he imitated the noise of a gunshot.

"Third light you end up in the back of this," Maura said, indicating the field ambulance they stood beside.

They fell to silence after that. Jane and Badr dragged on their cigarettes, hunched over a little against the unusually chilly summer night. Maura moved a little ways away to the rear of the ambulance and looked around it towards where the low hump that was Messines Ridge stood silhouetted against a deep night sky. She squinted at her watch, tilting it a little to read the hands by the starlight. There was no moon.

"Can't be long now, it's three ack emma," she said, using common phonetic slang for 'A.M.' "When do they hop the bags?" *

"Ten more minutes," Jane replied, taking one last drag before discarding the glowing stub.

Silence again. Maura leaned her back against the ambulance and looked back at the row of vehicles all parked near the wood. They were parked some six klicks north of Armentieres just outside of Ploegsteert, or Plugstreet as it was unaffectionately known. There were no lights but Maura could see vague dark shapes milling around and hear their lulled voices. Every now and then a tiny red dot bounced along as someone smoking a cigarette walked past. They were all waiting for zero hour, when the uneasy calm would be shattered with fire and noise.

Ten minutes seemed to drag on. Maura found herself staring idly at Jane, who stood off a ways chatting in a low voice with Badr. The two were close friends by then, and a good team. Badr seemed to tolerate Jane's brash personality and apparent death wish and she obviously enjoyed being around the friendly Moroccan. Jane didn't seem to notice Badr's intense infatuation for her, however, and if she did she dismissed it. Maura felt sorry for Badr but at the same time felt an inexplicable sense of satisfaction that Jane was not spoken for.

She couldn't explain what intrigued her so much about Jane. The Boston woman drove Maura crazy with her tardiness, disrespect for authority and attitude, yet Maura still caught herself watching Jane at odd moments. She loved the way Jane used her elegant hands, and how her unruly black hair often escaped its bun and fell across her sharp face. Sometimes Maura made excuses so that she and Jane had the same shifts. And she would make sure she was the first one to rush out and help unload the wounded when Jane and Badr returned from a trip to the trenches. Once, she and Jane brushed hands when handling a stretcher. The chill it gave her almost caused Maura to drop the poor soldier. Maura's eyes half-closed as she recalled the feeling.

"Here we go!" Jane called out.

It was 3:10. The air began to hum as, in the distance, explosions sounded. All of a sudden the night was ripped apart as one of the mines detonated on the ridge directly before them. The ground lurched underfoot and Maura dropped to her knees, slapping her hands to her ears to block out the thundering BOOM that split her head and shock the trees. The shockwave felt like a punch to her chest. She fell back against the rear wheel of the ambulance with a thud.

The darkness was chased away by violent colour. The red flame of the mine explosion illuminated a vast convex chunk of earth that had been lifted high above the ridge. Somewhere in that howling tempest were the bodies of German soldiers, and Maura felt a quick pang of empathy for the German nurses who must now be rushing to their positions, possibly woken from a few hours sleep and now expected to patch together victims of the British onslaught. If the Allied troops advanced far enough those nurses might themselves become casualties.

Someone's hands groped at Maura's collar as the explosion from the mine faded and the barrage began. It was Jane. She hauled Maura to feet, yelling something. But even with her face a few inches away Maura couldn't hear Jane over the ringing in her ears. The night was suddenly bright as day as hundreds of tonnes of artillery flew overhead and began to rain down upon the distant German lines. Maura could smell the cordite thick on the breeze.

Eventually Maura's hearing returned, and she realised Jane was shouting her name, still shaking her. "Maura! Maura! Can you hear me? Maura!"

"Yes … yes, I'm fine," Maura said shakily, struggling back to her feet half thanks to Jane's vice-grip on her lapels, half of her own volition. She'd forgotten what a real bombardment sounded like. The noise was deafening. It hit her like a brick wall now that her hearing was back.

"Good, I was worried," Jane said, a look of relief washing over her handsome face. Maura felt her heart leap in her chest and couldn't help returning Jane's wide smile.

Jane and Maura sat in the back of the truck talking, or rather shouting, as they waited for the first lot of wounded men to reach them. Jane offered Maura a cigarette again and this time she took it. They chatted freely about trivial things like their families and their favourite places to go in the summer, ludicrous topics considering the devilish orchestra of fire and death raging not a few klicks away. Shells screamed overhead as Maura explained the finer points of hunting on horseback, and Jane laughed as she recounted the time she stole her father's new car and drove it into a lake. Maura was thoroughly enjoying their time together, but then the first wave of wounded began to arrive and the two of them had to go to work.

It was going to be a long day.

* * *

*** Hop the bags - **military slang for an assault, so named because the soldiers would have to climb over the sandbags in the parapet in order to advance


	8. Chapter 8

Maura lost count of the number of trips they made between Plugstreet and Armentieres over the next fifteen hours. At one point they were diverted further north and ended up delivering wounded New Zealanders to Ypres. By late afternoon they'd been roped into transporting German POWs back to Armentieres and escorting them to a makeshift depot. When they made these trips Badr and a member of the Military Police sat in the back while Jane and Maura, for their own safety, rode up front with Jane driving. It was slow going. The roads were thick with ambulances and artillery limbers. Throngs of walking wounded and prisoners rested on the sides of the road in the heat.

Being alone in the cab together meant that Maura and Jane could talk some more. They were both so tired that it was a good way of keeping themselves awake. Maura offered to drive so that Jane could rest, but Jane refused. Instead they resumed the chat they started in the dark when the attack first got underway. Maura learnt all about Jane's family – how Jane's mother Angela had supported the family by running a successful restaurant in Boston. And how Jane made it into Radcliffe but nearly flunked out because she fell in with the wrong crowd.

"Thankfully America entered the war. I dropped out to enlist as a nurse and my mother never found out about my school results," she said, laughing throatily. Maura laughed along with her. "She was livid, of course. But she couldn't stop me. Just like she couldn't stop Frankie from enlisting either. At least she has Tommy. He's running a bank."

Maura then told her about her own history. How she was orphaned and then adopted by a wealthy family friend. Raised just outside of London on a rolling estate, Maura had been a lonely child - finding solace in books and horses. She was a proficient rider and a very intelligent woman. Jane was impressed by Maura's drive, especially at the breadth of her medical knowledge. Maura was 19 when war broke out and she had already been nursing for several years. But she left her job and enlisted in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, accompanying the first wave of British soldiers across the channel. She'd been based around Armentieres since late 1914 and knew the area like the back of her hand.

"Christ," Jane said. "I've only been here a few months and I'm already sick of the place."

Maura laughed. "It's not too bad. I'd rather be here than at Wipers."

They both fell silent at this comment. They'd seen the carnage at Ypres, mispronouned Wipers, that day. The magnificent Cloth Hall had been reduced to a pile of rubble. Entire streets were now graveyards for buildings, and the pervasive stench of death hung over the town like a pall. Everywhere they went it was in their nostrils, filling their lungs and reminding them of their proximity to mortality. The only way to rid themselves of its clammy fingers was to chainsmoke, and very few people in Ypres went around without a lit cigarette between their lips.

"I'd rather be home," Jane said quietly. Maura nodded.

"Me, too."

"Maybe after the war we can visit one another," Jane said, throwing her a brief smile.

"Yeah, I'd like that," Maura replied, surprised to find she actually did.

* * *

The three of them caught a brief few hours sleep after that trip. Badr then continued making prisoner runs while Jane and Maura teamed up to transport more wounded, this time closer to the action. Together they crossed No Mans Land, now under Allied control, and helped direct medics and stretcher-bearers to the new drop-off point. Darkness fell quickly as they worked close behind the new front line near Warneton. The advance had stopped after a German counter-attack had been repulsed in the afternoon. Now the Allied troops, two Australian divisions, were hunkered down attempting to reinforce their hasty positions.

Maura would never have admitted it to Jane, but she was terrified. The pair dodged shrapnel and errant machine gun fire as they accompanied wave after wave of wounded back across the battlefield. They got right into the trenches, organising soldiers to help them find injured men. At one point Maura led Jane by the hand as Jane piggy-backed a Private who had shattered both feet. There were simply too many wounded for the medics to handle.

Then, around midnight, they found themselves once more in the front line. It was quieter now. Just a few shells popping over every now and then, and the odd burst of machine gun fire. Maura and Jane had to pick their way over the sprawling legs of prone men. In the dark it was hard to tell whether they were sleeping or dead. They walked doubled over because the trench was shallow, hastily dug when the fire got too intense for the men to advance any further.

Just as they sent a group of injured men on their way, Maura paused.

"Did you hear that?" she said.

"Hear what?" Jane asked.

"A voice. Someone's calling for help."

Maura crouched forwards and moved towards the makeshift parapet. She knelt and leaned against the dirt, craning to hear. Then she heard it – a plaintive cry travelling across the moonscape of shell-holes.

"There it is again! There's someone out there," Maura said.

"Don't even think about it," Jane said, appearing at her shoulder. "I'm all for going above and beyond the call of duty, but going out there is suicide."

Maura shot her a look, then turned back to face the new No Mans Land.

"Hello there!" she called, pitching her voice over the stitch of machine gun bullets peppering the earth nearby. She and Jane ducked as a precautionary measure, then popped back up. "Can you crawl to my voice?"

"I can't," came the cry back. "I'm hung up on the wire."

"Where are you wounded?"

"The leg! My knee is buggered."

"Okay, hold on!"

Maura and Jane slid back down to the bottom of the trench. "We have to help him," Maura said, more attempting to convince herself than Jane. "He doesn't sound that far away. I'll stay here, you go find some wirecutters."

"Maura -" Jane began.

"I'm not going to argue about this," Maura replied flatly. "Go."

Jane held her gaze for a second, her dark eyes awash with both fear and pride. Then she got to her feet and ran, hunched over, back towards the soldiers while Maura sat silently at the bottom of the trench, steeling herself for what was to come.


	9. Chapter 9

It didn't take long for Jane to return, and she bought with her several soldiers.

"I figured they could lay down some covering fire if we need it," Jane said, panting a little from running in such a cramped position.

"Have you got the wirecutters?" Maura asked, moving to a crouched position. Jane hefted the long-handled cutters up and waggled them in front of Maura's face. Maura grinned and took them from her. "Alright, you wait here -"

"No," Jane said flatly. "I'm coming with you."

"No, Jane -"

"You can't carry a fully grown man by yourself. I'm coming, end of discussion."

Maura had to turn her head to hide her smile. "Alright then," she said, putting her hands on the parapet.

"Y' gonna wanna keep low," one of the soldiers said. "If a Very goes up pause, don' throw yerself t' th' ground. They'll be lookin' for movement. Keep one eye closed an' ye'll be able t' see better once it's gorn. When y' get close t' 'im git down on th' ground an' worm yer way for'ard. Take yer time snippin' the wire. Y' don' wanna be out there for ages cuttin' it down. Pick yer strands carefully an' snip when there's some noise. We'll be waitin' 'ere ready t' lay down some cov'rin' fire if y' need it."

Maura nodded at him, then looked at Jane. "On three," she said, trying to hide the quiver in her voice. "One, two ..."

Maura had only been in No Mans Land once before – during the Christmas Truce of 1914. She had never been 'over the top' when there was a risk of being shot. The second she clambered over the parapet Maura felt horribly exposed. The German trenches were only a hundred yards away. She prayed that no-one sent up a Very flare, she couldn't imagine how the Germans could fail to see them in its stark light.

Maura forced herself to tamp down her fear and began to make her way slowly forwards, doubled up as low as she could. After a few steps she felt something brush against her back and nearly jumped out of her skin, but it turned out to be Jane's hand. Jane grabbed a handful of Maura's apron so they wouldn't be separated.

"_Go,_" she whispered.

Together they made their way slowly between two large craters and past several bodies. In the darkness Maura couldn't tell what uniforms they wore. It didn't matter anyway. She forced herself to focus on where she placed her feet. The ground was still slippery from last night's deluge and patches of it sucked at her boots with a sickening squelch.

After a dozen yards or so Maura and Jane took shelter in a shellhole, careful to keep near the top. There had been gas attacks all day both from the Germans and the Allies, and different kinds of gas were known to settle in deep depressions on the landscape. Neither Maura nor Jane had their gas masks and so they warily kept away from the murky water below.

"How far ahead was he?" Jane murmured, carefully peering over the lip of the crater. "I can't see any wire."

"I'm not sure," Maura replied, panting a little from both fear and exertion. She lay on her back, glad for the chance to catch her breath in the relative safety of the hole. A few shells screamed overhead and landed far ahead. The same German machine gun as before opened up again and sent bullets zipping past them. They had the range of the trench perfectly calculated. Maura could hear the bullets hit the sandbags. She also heard a soldier yell out in shock and hoped he wasn't hit.

Jane swore and ducked back into the hole. "We should have figured out where he was before we left," she said, gripping the handles of the wirecutters tight.

Maura rolled onto her stomach and took her turn peeking over the rim. She saw very little in the gloom. There was a large hump – whether of earth or human remains, she didn't know – a few yards ahead and to their left. Some splintered wood, probably an artillery limber, reached up from the mud a few feet to the right of it. In the distant light of a shell explosion she thought she saw thin coils of wire to the right of that, but couldn't tell how far away it was. She turned and sunk back down next to Jane.

"There's an artillery limber ahead of us, we can take shelter there," she said. "I think I saw wire past that. I'm guessing that's where he is."

"Guessing. Great," Jane said, pushing herself onto her hands and knees. "Alright. Let's go then."

Maura led the way again, having devised the plan. They made good time to the artillery limber and crouched behind it. Maura gripped the wet wood tightly and peered through the gaps. She could see now that the wire was twenty metres directly in front of them, past a vast expanse of clear ground without even a shellhole to hide in. Even as they watched a machine gun sprayed across the earth in front of them, kicking up little fountains of dirt. Her heart sank.

"We can't do it," she said. "It's suicide."

"No, I see him," Jane said, pointing to where a body lay hung up on the wire. Maura saw the silhouette move slightly and a low moan reached her ears. "We have to go. Otherwise he'll die."

"_We'll _die if we go out there," Maura replied. "Wait, no! Jane -" But Jane was gone. Maura swore under her breath and followed.

They inched their way into danger on their stomachs with their faces pressed to the muck. Maura turned her head to the side and didn't look forwards, just reached, dragged then paused. Reached, dragged then paused. It seemed to take an eternity to crawl those few metres to the wire. Thankfully the man was hung up on the outer edge and they didn't need to crawl through the wire itself to reach him. He started crying when he saw them.

"God's sent me some angels," he declared. Jane giggled but Maura hushed them both. Together she and Jane looked at the wire, trying to decide which bits to cut. He was well tangled – both of his legs were wrapped tight with barbs biting into his trousers. Maura could see a dark red stain soaking the fabric around his right knee. He was in a lot of pain.

Slowly Maura and Jane worked at freeing the man – who told them his name was Charles. They did as instructed and waited until there was a shell blast before snipping the wire. It didn't take long to free Charles' injured leg and lower him to a more comfortable position while they worked on the other. After half an hour of steady progress there was just one strand left to cut, but it was wrapped around his foot and out of reach from the ground.

"I'm going to have to get up," Jane said.

"No! There has to be somewhere else to cut!"

"There isn't," Jane hissed in reply. "We don't have time. It's nearly dawn." Sure enough there was a faint blush on the eastern horizon. It wouldn't be long until they were visible to the enemy.

"Fine, but hurry. And Jane?" Maura grabbed Jane's arm as the Boston woman raised herself. Jane turned to look at her. "Be careful."

"Always," she replied, flashing a wide grin that made Maura's heart flutter.

Cautiously Jane rose herself to her knees, craning to reach the wire she wanted. Carefully she manipulated the wirecutters until they hugged the thin metal and waited for an explosion.

It all happened in an instant.

A shell exploded close by – close enough to buffet Jane who shifted her weight to accommodate. In the same breath a Very flare leapt up from the German lines and Jane was illuminated in startling brightness. A Spandau opened up directly in front of them. Jane buckled with a yelp. Maura threw herself over Charles, the force of her weight yanking his leg free from the wire. Together all three of them rolled down a small slope and landed in a heap at the bottom – slap bang in full view of the German trenches. The machine gun barked off another round, narrowly missing them. Maura felt a bullet whizz by her head.

"Get up!" she screamed. "Get up! We have to go!"

Together she and Jane hauled Charles to his feet, abandoning caution and staggering at a hasty jog-trot back towards the Allied lines. Another round of machine gun fire followed them past the artillery limber, past the shell-hole Maura and Jane had taken shelter in. They zig-zagged to avoid another machine gun that opened up to join the first. Dirt kicked up inches from Maura's left foot. She stumbled, dropping Charles who yelled out. Ahead Maura heard voices and the click of rifles being loaded.

"Covering fire!" she screamed, grabbing Charles by the lapel and dragging him along the ground. They were just metres from the trench. Her heart thundered in her ears, or maybe that was the volley of small-arms roaring to life from the Allied parapet. She could see the rounded helmets of the soldiers. Two metres left. Another round of machine gun fire swung her way. Charles yelled out.

Maura's breath was knocked from her lungs as she tripped into the forward sap and fell to the bottom of it with a crashing thud. Charles landed next to her with a grunt. Above them the Australians continued firing. Maura had never been more pleased to hear gunfire in her life. Every fibre of her being was drained. She would have happily lain there in the dirt for the rest of her life. But her relief was short-lived.

"Where's the other one?" Charles asked.


	10. Chapter 10

_Many apologies for the delay. With multiple writing projects for uni on hand and finishing up my old job in anticipation of the new one, I simply haven't had the drive to write this. But today I had a few hours to myself and watched a war documentary where Messines featured and it made me want to push on._

_So here it is!_

* * *

The cold hand of fear crushed Maura's lungs in a vice-grip. _Where was Jane? _She scrambled to her feet, throwing caution to the wind and thrusting her head above the parapet, scanning the gloom for movement.

"Jane!" she yelled. "Jane!"

There was no answer. None that she could hear, at any rate, as the Australians continued firing. A few stray German bullets thwacked into the sandbags near Maura's head and she ducked back, her heart leaping into her throat.

"Jane!" she called again, this time keeping down. "_JANE!_"

There was no answer. The soldiers quit firing as an officer came running up the sap.

"What's going on here?" he asked, eyes widening when he noticed Maura pressed against the parapet.

"Rescue party, sir," said one of the privates. "We was layin' down some cov'rin' fire."

"My partner is still out there!" Maura interjected, voice cracking in panic. "She was right behind me. Jane!" she shouted, moving to look above the sandbags again. But the officer caught her by the shoulder and pulled her back. Just in time, it turned out, as another round of machine gun fire stitched the earth above their heads.

Together she and the soldiers waited, straining to hear an answer to Maura's repeated cries. No sound came. Soon even the machine gun quit its chattering. A strange, eerie calm settled over the battlefield. There were no more Verys now. Weak sunlight was struggling to pierce the clouds, casting a pale dawn over the broken, charred landscape. The officer sent a man to find a periscope, and when he returned Maura was allowed to cautiously poke it over the parapet and scan the ground before them. She saw nothing.

A sense of abject disbelief enveloped her. Was that it? She had known other nurses to die before, but always out of sight, always somewhere away from her with hours between their last words together. Maura had never been with a person one minute only to have them suddenly gone the next. It was a terrifying and overwhelming experience, and left her feeling lost. She couldn't imagine being a soldier and having to deal with this sort of occurrence on a regular basis. Was this why some came back from the trenches not wounded in the flesh, but in the mind?

Distraught, Maura finally let her trembling knees give way and sank down to the bottom of the shallow sap. Charles, the injured man, caught her attention and brought her a little ways out of her numb reverie. He was clutching his leg, which was still bleeding although the flow had ebbed to a slow ooze. Maura whipped off her apron and made a makeshift tourniquet. "Keep pressure on it," she advised him on autopilot.

Maura looked despairingly up at the sandbags above her. She had to get Charles back to the aid station, without immediate care he was in danger of bleeding to death. She had no idea how long he'd been trapped on the wire.

"I need help to carry this man to the ambulance," she said to nobody in particular. The officer nodded and ordered two men to link arms and form a sort of chair into which several others, with much groaning on Charles' part, lifted the wounded man.

Just as Maura made ready to turn and head back down the trench there was a sudden shout and a burst of gunfire in the distance.

"Friendly coming in!" someone called. The men nearby opened up with their own rifles, laying down a covering fire. Uncaring of the danger, Maura scrambled to the parapet in time to reach up and catch a falling body. They crashed together to the bottom of the trench, wild black hair suddenly in Maura's mouth.

It was Jane.

Maura's joy only lasted as long as a heartbeat when she saw the vast red stain of blood pooling across Jane's abdomen. The Boston nurse was pale as a sheet, her last few yards of exertion had exacted a terrible toll on her energy. She was barely able to muster a weak smile, eyelids fluttering like a hummingbird's wings as she tried to focus on Maura.

"Missed by that much," she whispered, her lips a shocking shade of purple. Maura didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so she did both, throwing herself on Jane and drawing the woman up into her arms.

"Ow," Jane protested half-heartedly.

"Sorry," Maura said, sniffling a little and swiping at the tears on her cheeks with dirty hands.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to drive home."

"That's alright. I can drive."

"I've seen what you call driving. There'll be more wounded to add to the roster by the time we get back."

Maura laughed again, but it was short. She was alarmed at how weak Jane's voice was getting. Quickly she stood and organised a few more men to gently take up the wounded woman. With her leading they made their way out of the sap and across the desolate waste behind the new frontline in good time, dodging a few errant shells as they did. The soldiers loaded Jane onto the ambulance first. By now she was unconscious. Fraught with worry Maura checked Charles' tourniquet and had him sit alongside Jane's stretcher and apply pressure to her wound. Then she ran around the side to the driver's seat and began the longest drive of her life.

It was only a few short kilometres to Armentieres, but the newly shelled landscape and congested roads made for slow going. More men were being moved up to the new front in preparation for a fresh attack. Most looked like fresh faced boys, smiling gaily and bouncing their helmets on the ends of their rifles. They ignored the crawling ambulance.

It took an hour to reach the station, by which time the sun was well up and Maura's nerves were thoroughly frayed. Jane was whisked inside, but before Maura could follow she was blocked by a grim-faced Korsak. He recognised her drawn, wan expression and ordered her to rest. Maura wanted to object, but the trials of the last few hours and the day before had drained her of strength. She didn't even bother returning to the schoolhouse. Instead she settled herself on the smooth dirt in the shade of the tent and lay down. Within seconds she was dead to the world.


	11. Chapter 11

Maura was having the most pleasant dream. Someone was caressing her. Who, she could not see - her eyes were filled with a blinding golden light. But the touch was soft and filled with love. It was not localised but all over her body on every patch of exposed skin and even underneath her clothes, warm and cool at the same time. It was odd but extremely comfortable. Maura wanted nothing more than to lay there in bliss for the rest of eternity.

But there was a strange throbbing sound in her ears. She frowned, but couldn't quite pick it out. It sounded like drums underwater. Now that her concentration had been snatched away she could also hear other things – the jingle of horse tack, hooves and wheels on stone, bootsteps, low voices.

She opened her eyes.

She was in the schoolhouse, tucked tightly into her bed. A lamp rested on a small table adjacent to her pillow, throwing a bright yellow light into her face. Maura shifted beneath the sheets and realised she was in her nightgown. She only allowed herself a second to feel embarassed about this fact as she pulled back the sheets and swung her feet to the floor, suddenly ignited with a frenzied need to find Jane.

She found a fresh, neatly folded uniform in her cubby in the back room and dressed quickly. Outside it was beginning to rain. A light sheen of mist too heavy to be fog was ghosting down from the dark sky. In the distance Maura could see tracer lights from shells and shuddered, reliving her brief experience under fire.

The streets were more active than usual. Artillery limbers rolled by in a constant line, while columns of infantry marched alongside. One or two soldiers called to Maura but she ignored them. Her stomach was clenched tight with hunger and, for a second, she considered grabbing a hasty meal at the mess tent. The thought was fleeting. Instead she tucked her chin into the high collar of her coat and began to make her way to the station.

It took longer than usual. Maura had to contend herself with walking alongside mules laden with ammunition. The poor things walked with their heads low, long ears drooping. Mud caked their flanks and the underside of their stomachs. Maura felt a sudden surging hatred of the war for causing such misery to everyone and everything. She had no treats to give the creatures, but as they halted to wait for a line of reinforcements to pass she gave the mules each a sympathetic scratch on their thin necks. They seemed to enjoy it.

Maura left her new friends when she reached the side street that would take her to the station. This street was kept reasonably clear and free-flowing so that the ambulances could drive without obstacle, so Maura made much better time and soon the tent came into view. Even from fifty metres away she could tell it was a hive of activity. The groans of the wounded were audible even over the explosions at the front, and she could hear Korsak's whiskery voice loudly directing nurses.

She ducked under the flap and came up into hell. It had been nearly two years since she'd seen the station so packed with wounded men, not since the last big skirmish at Ypres. It was chaos. Gwynn and Beth whisked by, arms full of red bandages. One of the newer nurses leaned her torso over a screaming soldier's face as Korsak struggled to pull a large piece of shrapnel from the man's upper arm. He succeeded just as Maura hurried up.

"Well, look who's awake," Korsak said, his smile twisting involuntarily into a grimace as he dropped the bloody bit of metal onto a tray.

"Where's Jane?" Maura asked breathlessly.

"Hello to you, too," he replied, barking a laugh.

"Hello. Now where's Jane?"

"She's gone," he said. Maura felt her heart plummet through her shoes. A cold panic replaced it in her chest.

"W-what?" she whispered.

Korsak looked alarmed at her reaction. Then he realised what he'd said.

"Oh god, no. She's not dead, Maura. She's just not here."

Maura's knees went weak with relief. She had to grip the nearest bed to steady herself.

"Where is she?"

"We couldn't do much for her here. I sent her to a field hospital with a transport."

"Which hospital?"

"I don't know, Maura. She was alive when she left. That's all I can tell you." Then Korsak turned and strode away to work on the next injured man.

Maura wanted to grab him, shake him, yell in his face and demand to know where Jane had gone. The strength of these feelings terrified her. With some difficulty she managed to rein herself in, swallow the lump in her throat, and go in search of her apron.

* * *

The battle kept raging well into the wettest summer and autumn of living memory. Maura had plenty of time to think about her feelings for Jane as she nursed through some of the worst skirmishes of the war. They lost Badr at the end of October when his ambulance received a direct hit from a shell near Passchendaele. There wasn't even a body to bury. By the time the Third Battle of Ypres drew to a close in early November the British troops had suffered over 300,000 casualties.

Although Maura looked long and hard she never found Jane. At first she sent out enquiring letters to local field hospitals. When that didn't work she started travelling around visiting them. She went as far as the Somme where she nursed for two weeks as she searched the surrounding area. But after two months she was forced to admit defeat and return to Armentieres.

In December Maura was given three weeks leave. She took it in England where she renewed her frantic quest to find Jane. A few days after her arrival in London she found a hospital that had treated Jane for severe abdominal wounds. Bolstered by the news that Jane had made it to England alive, Maura traced her whereabouts to a convalescent home in the countryside only for the trail to run cold again when she was told that Jane had been shipped back to America. Heartbroken, Maura spent the rest of her leave on a friend's estate just outside of London and returned to France convinced she'd never see Jane again.


	12. Chapter 12

_Welcome to part two of this fanfic! This was the most difficult, yet ultimately most rewarding, chapter for me to write so far. I'm a stickler for accuracy, and spent two hours researching troop movements, army positions, battles, locations, routes and possible timelines before settling on which area of France to use. I needed a place where both British and American troops were both involved, but also a place where there was a large-scale retreat. The obvious choice was the Marne, but I still had to decide exactly where Maura would be sent. And after that I also had to work out exactly how quickly things needed to happen._

_I sure hope you guys like this chapter, because I really enjoyed researching it!_

* * *

**PART TWO**

Barely a month after Maura returned Korsak was taken badly ill and invalided back behind lines. Without a doctor the aid station was no longer effective. After much deliberation, and several letters to both Korsak and the big-wigs of the British army, it was decided to disband Casualty Clearing Station Five. The American reinforcements went to join the newly arrived American Expeditionary Forces while the remaining British nurses received new assignments. Gwynn, because of her age, chose to return to Britain and take a position at a convalescent home for blind soldiers. Eliza and Beth, sick of being so close to the trenches, went together to a British field hospital near Paris. Maura, who still pined for Jane, volunteered to teach newly arrived American nurses.

For a few weeks she was based behind the lines, but soon tired of the monotony and the strict rules enforced by the bullish matron in charge, who felt threatened by the ballsy British nurse who had years of experience and little patience for frivolities like folding blankets. Maura applied for, and received, permission to move closer to the lines and was re-attached to one of four British divisions north-east of Paris on the Chemin des Dames Ridge. The ridge had been captured from the Germans around the same time Maura and Jane had been embroiled in the Third Battle of Ypres further north the year before. The ridge had been captured by French forces, who later mutinied against the atrocious battle conditions. 28 men were executed by the new French general Pétain and British troops were called in to take over the western part of the ridge.

It was here that Maura found herself in early March. She had a difficult time settling in. None of the other nurses were very friendly and the sector was relatively quiet. Maura found herself spending a lot of time alone. She read Tolstoy and took up sketching, although she wasn't very good at it. Before long she found her pencil stopped drawing soldiers and started tracing a sharp, angular face framed by wild, dark hair.

She missed Jane. She missed her like she'd never missed a person before. Jane was the first thing on her mind when she woke, and the last thing she saw before she fell asleep. The Boston woman's face swam before Maura's eyes when Maura dressed wounds, her gravelly laugh grating in Maura's ears as the shells fell around her, the ghostly impression of her long fingers brushing against Maura's arm in the cold spring breeze. Jane was everywhere. Maura felt a constant ache, like part of her was missing.

How could she have ever disliked Jane? Maura thought back to those first few days when Jane had arrived in Armentieres. How much trouble she'd been, and how angry she made Maura! How her blood had boiled when Jane was tardy or caused a fuss. But now Maura would have done anything to rewind the clock.

The worst part was that she had no idea if Jane had survived her wounds. All she knew was that Jane had been shipped back to America after being patched up in England. She could have died at sea from complications, or even died later on in America from infection. Even more terrifying was the spread of a new influenza strain that had just reached New York. So far it wasn't very serious, but Maura knew enough about the spread of disease to tell it had the potential to cause serious damage.

She became withdrawn and nervous, breaking down in late March after a particularly intense bombardment. She was sent behind lines and diagnosed with a mild case of shell shock. The French doctors wanted to send her back to England for treatment, but Maura erupted into a fit of panic at the very mention of leaving France. In her mind France was her link to Jane. And if she just stayed in France long enough she would find her. Not knowing what else to do the doctors kept her in a solitary ward and let her roam the sparse gardens whenever she pleased. The fresh air and relaxed atmosphere did Maura a world of good.

By the time she felt well again the Germans had broken through on the Somme almost all the way to Amiens. In two weeks the Allies lost over sixty-five kilometres of ground. Sixty-five kilometres they had spent the last three years viciously defending. Less than a week later the Germans launched the Lys Offensive further north near Ypres. All the ground the Allies had bled for for most of the previous year was over-ran in twenty days of fierce fighting. The ground that Jane had been shot on was lost in a matter of days. This news caused Maura to lapse once more into despair, but this time she struggled harder against it. She wanted revenge.

She had her chance in May. There were rumours of German troop movements on the Meuse River and the British and French troops there were being reinforced with American units. Maura was hastily declared fit for service and pressed back into action once more at Chemin des Dames. Here she was placed further back from the frontline for fear of a similar breakthrough like what had happened on the Somme and in Belgium.

It was here, on the morning of the 27th of March, that the Germans launched a large scale attack preceded by a fercious bombardment. The British had massed all their troops on the ridge, expecting a full frontal charge from infantry. Instead they were annihilated by artillery which was then followed by poisonous gas. By the time the specially trained German stormtroopers arrived they had very little to do and were able to punch through a large gap in the Allied lines, capturing thousands of Allied soldiers in the process.

Maura's aid station disbanded in panic and scattered to the wind. By the afternoon she found herself bumping along a rutted road in a field ambulance full of gas cases, retreating ahead of the relentless German advance. They crossed the Vesle River near Reims and didn't stop for nightfall, fearing the Germans were right behind them. It was slow going. It took three days to drive 60 kilometres south-west with gunfire and artillery hot on their heels. On the 30th of March they bounced into Château-Thierry just ahead of the retreating French 10th Colonial Division.

Here they were met, much to Maura's surprise, by American troops. She knew something was strange about them long before she heard the accents. Their foreign uniforms were a dead giveaway, but she was more intrigued by their fresh faces. They didn't have the same haggard appearance of the weary British troops. Her ambulance was greeted by a smartly dressed young medical officer who cheerfully directed them to a makeshift aid station on the opposite side of the town. Here the nurses and doctors wore impeccably clean uniforms and wide smiles. They took the gas cases from the back of the field ambulance, but also gently ushered Maura and the driver into the tent. Here Maura was given water and half a loaf of bread by a curly-haired blonde woman who also checked her over. The nurse briskly informed Maura that she was suffering from extreme exhaustion and prescribed bed-rest. Her formality was incredibly alien to Maura. It was hard to believe they were so close to the front. She could have been in a hospital in New York.

Maura neglected the sleep in favour of wolfing down the bread. When she'd swallowed the last bite she took great gulps of water, spilling it down her front. A few of the nurses stared at her and Maura knew she must look a sight. But she was long past caring.

The food bolstered her and she made her way towards the tent flap, waiting until the blonde nurse was on the other side of the tent before making good her escape. The street outside thronged with troops moving towards where the Americans were setting up their defenses on the riverbank. Maura stepped to the side to stay out of their way and began walking in the opposite direction.

She passed neat rows of ammunition boxes and supply crates with webbing thrown over the top of the stacks to disguise them from the air. Further up the road a small unit of Americans rested under tall trees. Some called greetings out to her, one asked where she was going. But Maura gave him a tight-lipped smile and shrugged her shoulders wearily. She kept following the trees, not knowing where her feet were taking her, almost blind with exhaustion. Just as she was ready to give up walking and look for a place to sleep another aid tent came into view. A nurse ducked under the flap in the entrance and came up hunched over a match, attempting to light a cigarette. Her long, unruly hair fell in the way and the woman cursed in a deep, rustic voice.

Maura stopped dead in her tracks, not knowing if the voice was real or if she was hallucinating. The woman straightened, drawing at the cheap fag through thin, pursed lips, and turned. Mid-puff her gaze settled on Maura. For a second the woman paused, a look of shock dawning on her face. Then she choked on the smoke in her lungs and spluttered.

"M-m-_Maura?!_"

Jane's eyes seemed to grow larger and larger until they filled Maura's vision, enveloping her like deep, dark pools until all she could see was black. She never felt her legs give way. Never heard Jane's shout.

All she knew was that familiar abyss.


End file.
